"Why shouldn't you read it?" asked Jay.
Ben tossed it down and dropped the curtains, leaving Jay with his message. As with Ben, the date line and address first appeared; next, Jay read:
"I had to tell them I guess I've got to ask you to go through with it sorry sorryLida."
He held it steadily, without surprise, his eyes traveling from end to end of the double line. "Lyda," he repeated to himself, "Leeda," he tried the name with inflection used by others. He looked up at the date line: 3 a. m.
She had sent it fifteen hours after yesterday noon, when he had left her. What else had happened? When had she had to tell "them"? Just before 3 a. m., or had that been merely the hour when she decided to telegraph him upon the train?
He considered the address to him on the fourth section of the Century and recollected how she had asked him not only the train but the section on which he would travel. Yet he had not expected a telegram from her; not on the train. She had said she only wanted to know where he was.
She had wanted, also, to know where he would go from the train; and he had promised to tell her where he would be every day.
Every day for how long? Throughout his life? Did this mean that now he must tell her every day throughout his whole life? Perspiration dampened his hands in spite of the cold draft blowing in the screen of the opened window. "Lyda; Leeda," he tried her name again. Which way would he like it best—throughout his whole life?
